NASA astronaut and Expedition 62 Flight Engineer Jessica Meir poses for a portrait inside the International Space Station's "window to the world," the cupola. The orbiting lab was flying above the middle of the Pacific Ocean at the time this photograph was taken.Courtesy of NASA.

On September 25, 2019, as dusk settled over the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, NASA astronaut Jessica Meir, along with two fellow crewmates, rocketed off to the International Space Station. On April 17, Meir returned—if not exactly to the world she left behind. Reentry has its usual set of potential discomforts. Some have described the so-called “soft landing” of the capsule as having the sudden jolt of a car accident; motion sickness may occur as the body adapts to gravity. But rejoining life on Earth during a pandemic is another matter entirely. “It’s really difficult—I’m a hugger!” Meir explained in a call from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where she and fellow astronaut Andrew Morgan just spent a week in on-site quarantine. A few NASA friends and family members, who self-isolated for two weeks prior, were there as support—sometimes literally. “You’re obviously a little bit wobbly at first,” Meir said. “You pick up your phone or tablet, and it feels like it weighs 30 or 40 pounds, even though your brain knows it doesn’t.” Still, broadly speaking, this isolation after isolation makes for a strange welcome. “Seven months go by, and now I still can’t come and hug people.”

Even before Meir (a dual American and Swedish citizen) emerged from 205 days in space—part of a group at the ISS that ranged from three to nine people—she staked her career at the outer limits. “I think I’ve always been attracted to these extreme environments, places where fewer people have been, where conditions are a little bit more harsh,” she explained in a NASA video celebrating the September launch. In it, a montage of photos shows Meir scuba diving in ice-capped waters off Antarctica, where she studied the diving physiology of emperor penguins as part of her PhD in marine biology. By the time the 42-year-old participated in the first all-female spacewalk in October, spending a little over seven hours with fellow astronaut Christina Koch floating in the pitch-black void, it was hard to imagine where Meir would land next.

But in the early weeks of the pandemic, as people stocked up on nonperishables and began drifting from their home office to their home home on the other side of the room, I found myself thinking about Meir’s setup at the ISS: tight quarters, family video chats, indoor workouts, vegetables arriving by special delivery. Is Meir the oracle of quarantine? I noticed as her scenic Instagram posts from space quietly took stock of the situation below; a slideshow of clouds from March 19 bears a reminder that “they are all fleeting in nature—the storm always clears. #EarthStrong.” Having now joined us in terrestrial quarantine, Meir finds it “much more isolating and confined here,” she acknowledged when we spoke on Earth Day—even if aged Gouda and wine have sweetened the homecoming. Hers is the voice you want to hear: a scientist with long-range optimism, who imagines future humans growing mizuna on the way to Mars. Read on for her descriptions of NASA’s next-gen space food, her blazing reentry, and the space movies that pass her muster.

Vanity Fair: Welcome back to Earth—what a surreal thing to say. How do you even express this feeling of homecoming?

Jessica Meir: It is quite strange, especially returning to a completely different planet than the one we left. You spend so much time up there—it was almost seven months for me—that floating just starts becoming normal. You feel normal waking up and floating to your next destination, and it feels like just a normal part of your day to go to the window and look down on Earth. I really find myself missing that already. Coming back down to the planet, the ride in the Soyuz—that’s the Russian spacecraft and rocket from which we launched—was really an exceptional experience. This vehicle is just so robust and so well designed that everything happens like clockwork. My job as the copilot was to monitor all of these things during the descent, and it was incredible to witness. When you start entering the atmosphere, that part is just crazy. You look out the window, which is inches away from your head, and you can see that everything is burning up around you. You’re going through this plasma layer, and at the end the windows are just completely burnt-over orange. Then the parachutes deploy, and that is the most dynamic part of the ride. You’re really being thrown in every direction possible, like you’re in a washing machine or something. I was actually quite surprised by how soft of a landing it was. The strange part was, the hatch opens and there are these rescue teams there, all wearing masks—and suddenly we’re part of this brave new world of COVID-19.

Advertisement

On your Instagram, where you’ve been posting beautiful photos of the planet from the ISS, you began using the hashtag #EarthStrong as the coronavirus spread. What was it like to process the news from so far away?

It felt a bit surreal, to watch it all unfold from up there because, first of all, we were still going through our completely normal days. We were doing all the experiments, doing all the maintenance, just as we were before all this happened. Of course, the lives of everybody on the ground were affected. All of our Mission Control personnel were working in different places, with different protocols in place. It’s a testament to how robust our NASA team and NASA family are, that they were able to totally adapt to these new requirements, but they didn’t let it affect our daily operations. Even though we were keeping in touch with family and friends, and we had a constant stream of news, it was really difficult to comprehend. If you think about it, all 7.5 billion people on the planet have been affected by this in some way. And for that time being up there, we were the only three humans not affected by it. It was hard to wrap your head around that—and then to know that we were going to be coming back into the thick of it.

What is your quarantine setup like, and who are the people allowed in your earthly orbit?

Normally, astronauts do spend the first night or so in the crew quarantine facility on-site here at the Johnson Space Center, depending on how they feel. Then they are usually allowed to sleep at home and just come back to do all the medical and physiological testing that we’re doing in these first few weeks—all those very critical first-time points because our body is readjusting to gravity again. But we are staying here for a full week, so I haven’t even been home to my house yet. But it’s a facility that we’re comfortable with. We stayed here during our astronaut selection, and it has kind of small hotel-like rooms, so we have all the amenities that we need. The ground team is taking such good care of us. In the first few days, a lot of times [astronauts] need some help because you’re a little bit wobbly getting around, and my best friend from college was going to come down from Philadelphia and help me. That didn’t end up working out, with all of the travel restrictions and changes in the protocols. Luckily, though, one of my best friends from the astronaut world, Anne McClain, quarantined for a couple weeks so that she could be my support person here. She’s staying in the facility with us, and then Drew Morgan, my crewmate—his wife and children are here with us, too. It’s nice. We have a little family unit. At least I can get a few hugs. For me, it’s really difficult—I’m a hugger. Seven months go by, and now I still can’t come and hug people.

Advertisement

What has been the most revelatory food experience for you since landing?

I actually didn’t really feel very deprived on the food side up there because a lot of the new foods that the NASA Lab has developed are really quite good. I was part of an experiment called Food Physiology, so I was required to eat a lot of these new foods, and—compared to the older NASA standard menu that we have in space—it’s kind of more how I eat anyway. So I was eating things like Turkish fish stew and Indian fish curry; sweet-and-savory kale and braised red cabbage; brussels sprouts, butternut squash. The thing that I’m really excited to come back to is salad. We get a few fresh vegetables and fruits when we have a resupply vehicle—we had a Cygnus and a SpaceX vehicle come in our last few months—but obviously not a full variety. One of the highlights when I was on board the space station was that we were growing mizuna lettuce. That, of course, is really important for developing our own sustainable food sources for future missions; if we are going to go all the way to Mars, we need to be able to grow some of our own food. In that experiment, we actually got to eat half of the harvest at the end, so we did have a space salad! I’ve basically had salad every day since I’ve been back, and the food lab supplied some of my favorite cheese. There’s some aged gouda, some manchego, and aged cheddar. And yogurt—I love yogurt. The Russian Space Agency has some yogurt on board, so I had it a couple times, but we don’t have that in our menu. So I was very excited for that as well.

You do so much research on physiological changes in space. What has come to pass after those 205 days?

One of the interesting things that is, of course, the most important right now—given the COVID-19 situation and the reason why we are in this stringent quarantine—is that the immune system is disregulated in space. For some reason, whether it’s the stress or the isolation or some unique aspect of microgravity itself, there are several indicators that show differences in our immune function. It’s very common in space to have reactivation of latent viruses—for example, the chicken pox virus that manifests itself as shingles later in life. We also have immunosuppression, where our T-cell count and some other indicators are down a bit in space. Those are the things that they’re closely monitoring right now, to make sure that we are back up at a baseline level so that it’s safe for us to leave the quarantine facility and interact with more people.

In terms of other factors, we know that if you didn’t exercise, you would have a really dramatic decrease in bone density and muscle mass. That is because, even if you’re sitting doing nothing on Earth, your bones and your muscles are always still counteracting that force of gravity. When you go to space, your bones will start leaching calcium because you don’t have that loading force. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so important for us to exercise. We spend two and a half hours per day on our schedule exercising. We have a stationary bike and also a treadmill, but the most important one for loading is the weight lifting, so we have this really impressive device called the ARED—Advanced Resistive Exercise Device—and it uses these two large vacuum tubes to generate the resistance. We can configure the arms of that in various different positions, so you can do every exercise imaginable: You can do squats, you can do bench press, overhead press, sit-ups. Now, we actually are bringing astronauts back, in many cases, increasing their muscle mass and maintaining the bone density in almost all the bones as well. I don’t have those results yet, but I was lifting a ton of weight when I was up there, and running every day, five or six miles. Still, there’s something about your cardiovascular system now suddenly having to work against gravity. What most astronauts have described, trying to run or even going for a long walk is quite exhausting when you first come back because there’s this other element that you haven’t even had.

Advertisement

It’s fascinating, the strange parallels between what people are complaining about in their homes and what you, by nature of the job, did at the ISS. Living and working in close quarters; exercising at home. It seems like you could write the handbook for quarantine.

Yeah [laughs]. Right now, it’s still this transition phase where we’re really busy and doing all these tests and living at this facility. But I think as soon as I go home, which will probably be this weekend, it’s going to feel a lot more isolated and confining than it did in space, with everything that’s going on right now. On the space station, that’s just part of the job, and it’s balanced by the extraordinary views and experiences that we have. But here, it’s more difficult when you’re confined. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be on Earth. That’s not the way our society is built.

You were part of the first all-female spacewalk. What part of those seven hours and 17 minutes was most memorable for you?

You always remember your very first trip out of the hatch—that first moment where you come outside of the space station and you look down, and there’s nothing between you and the Earth. You see your boots hanging there, and you realize that you are only separate from the vacuum of space by the thin visor in your helmet. This little self-contained spacesuit is responsible for maintaining your life. The colors and the view, it’s even more extraordinary than it is from inside with the windows. You try to appreciate all of that, but the fact is, most of those seven hours you’re not even thinking about that because you are so busy. All of your muscle memory from all of your training kicks in, and you’re trying to make sure that you do everything correctly and get the job done. On that first spacewalk we did, Christina and I were replacing the BCDU—the Battery Charge/Discharge Unit—and that was an integral part in order to save this power channel on the space station. I had this big piece of equipment attached to me, and I was thinking, This is my first spacewalk. If I do something here where I damage this piece of equipment, that’s it. We’re hosed. That first spacewalk, we were very fortunate that we didn’t experience problems with the hardware or our tools or our suits. But on the second one, Christina’s helmet lights and her video equipment became detached from her helmet, which is not supposed to happen outside because there isn’t a good way to reinstall it out there. And then on the next one, her hand controller for her SAFER [Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue]—which is basically the safety net that we have if your tethers were to fail and you became detached from the space station, you could kind of fly yourself back that way—came out during the spacewalk, so I had to put that back in its case. These are just things that are really difficult to do with the big cumbersome spacesuit gloves on. But those were two really cool moments because they were unexpected challenges. We had to think, Okay, we need to first of all remain calm and figure out what we need to do here.

Christina Koch and Meir work on their spacesuits ahead of their spacewalk.

Courtesy of NASA.

Koch is pictured working in the vacuum of space 265 miles above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa.

Courtesy of NASA.

That first spacewalk, part of it was just the two of us going out there, doing our job that day. But it certainly wasn’t lost on us that it meant a lot to so many people, and to us as well. It really highlighted the generations that came before us—all of the women that made it possible for us to get where we are now, all through the STEM fields and the astronaut corps. Actually it was quite overwhelming for me because I didn’t really expect such a response from the ground.

Advertisement

What’s beauty and grooming like in space? Your curls always looked so great up there; people always complain about them on Earth. Does NASA have a skin-care line?

I loved my space hair! I really miss it. It was actually interesting because my curls are not super tight on Earth, but they were much tighter up there. Now, suddenly there’s gravity and my hair is all hanging down again, and I’m not very excited about it. I haven’t had a haircut since last July! Everyone’s complaining about not being able to go to the salon because of everything being closed. I’m really in a dire situation here [laughs].

Meir observes a floating sphere of water formed by microgravity.

Courtesy of NASA.

We have certain hygiene items that we can fly. But there are a lot of ingredients in those kinds of hygiene products we can’t use on the International Space Station because they have bad effects on the atmospheric regeneration system. We can’t use anything that has alcohol in it; we can’t use anything that has siloxanes in it. But I try to use more natural products anyway, and so that helps. We have a whole team here at NASA that will review all of the ingredients and tell you whether or not it’s approved. But there was enough flexibility there that I was able to fly the things that I needed. I really can’t say [which brands] because, as civil servants and especially as astronauts or public figures, we can’t endorse certain products. I would love to share, but unfortunately I can’t.

When you finally arrive back home, what are your plans? Do you have shows to binge-watch, or projects lined up?

We’re pretty busy the first two months, doing a lot of these medical checks and also our physiological experiments. Those are really important data-collection points—before the mission, in the mission, and then after the mission. Typically after those first two months, you have about four months where you can take some much-needed vacation and you can basically do a post-flight P.R. tour. I had quite a few things lined up, but unfortunately all of that is up in the air or already canceled. I kind of feel like for the first time in my life right now, I’m not sure what my plan is. On a short timescale, I’m very excited to lie in my hammock and look up at the trees and kind of feel the air on my face—those things that we take for granted on Earth that we don’t have in space. I did try to post a lot of pictures on social media, but I have thousands and thousands that I haven’t even had a chance to go through, so I do want to try to catalog those well and figure out the best way to share some of those images. And then I’ll start thinking about what my job will be when I come back to work. About six months after we land, we come back into the office and have a ground assignment. It’s funny, though. I did have a plan before, but now that’s gone. Instead of thinking about what I’m going to do and how to reintegrate back into life on Earth, I find myself thinking, When do I get to go back to space?

The Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft is seen as it lands in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, April 17, 2020.

By Andrey Shelepin/NASA/GCTC.

If you feel nostalgic, will you turn to space movies—or does that genre have less appeal after you experience the real thing?

No, I definitely watch some space movies. I think my favorite space movie of recent times was Apollo 11. It was a documentary, essentially, and it was made with all original footage. Not only was it describing the entire mission, it was also a really cool social commentary on that time period. There were scenes [from] the beaches in Florida where everyone gathered for launch, and you could see what people were wearing and what people were doing and how they were interacting. It was all put together in really a different way than I had ever seen before. I actually was just watching on orbit For All Mankind, which is a television series. It’s fiction, but it uses a lot of real-life events, but then they change what happened with the space race. Some of the big Hollywood movies are not very realistic, but even things like The Martian are really enjoyable for everyone at NASA to watch. The Martian, actually, they did consult with NASA, so they did get a lot of things quite right. I’ve only been back a few days and haven’t watched anything yet, but I think it will feel different now.

Meir outside the Soyuz MS-15 spacecraft after landing.

By Andrey Shelepin/NASA/GCTC.

You’ve come home in time for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Do you have hopes of what positive lasting effects might come out of this global situation?

Advertisement

When you look down on the Earth, you see this amazing, gorgeous planet and all the different land masses and oceans, and you don’t see any of those political boundaries that we’ve drawn on a map. It’s so easy for us to realize that we’re in this together. When that very first Earthrise photo was taken in Apollo 8 by the landers, that was pivotal in shaping the environmental movement and getting people to appreciate that our planet was fragile and needed to be protected. And I think that’s the same kind of thing with this COVID-19 situation. I wish that everybody could have that view [from the space station] because I think it really does help you maintain that perspective, and that’s something that we need to have collectively as a human species in order to save our planet and in order to get through this COVID-19 crisis.